Now, a Chance to Catch Up to His Epochal Vision

Published: November 7, 2012

From the first time Barack Obama summoned the country’s leading presidential historians to dinner, they saw that the type of discussion he wanted would be different from their talks with previous Oval Office occupants.

Paul Hosefros/The New York Times

Associated Press

In 2011, they were suggesting a new role model, Theodore Roosevelt.

There was almost no small talk, for this was no idle exercise. Though Mr. Obama knew many of his predecessors’ stories cold, he was no history buff: he showed little curiosity about their personalities and almost no interest in the founding fathers. His goal, the historians realized, was more strategic. He wanted to apply the lessons of past presidential triumphs and failures to his own urgent project of setting the country on a new path.

At three private annual gatherings during his first years in office, he asked pointed questions: How did Ronald Reagan engineer his 1984 re-election despite a poor economy? Where did the Tea Party fit in the tradition of American protest movements? Theodore Roosevelt bypassed Congress to launch progressive programs; could Mr. Obama do the same?

The president was coolly eyeing American history in order to carve his own grand place in it, the guests said in interviews later. “It was almost as if he was writing his own history book about himself,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at Stanford University. Becoming the 44th president of the United States, or even the first African-American to hold the post, had never been enough for Barack Obama. Just two years after arriving in the Senate, he spoke unabashedly of becoming one of the greatest presidents, a transformative figure like Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt who would heal the country’s divisions, address its most critical problems and turn Americans in a hopeful new direction.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama successfully wrote his next chapter, joining the club of presidents who have secured second terms. Yet the man who once envisioned himself in the pantheon of transcendent presidents enters his next term as a far more conventional, partisan leader than he intended to be. He defeated a mistake-prone challenger of unsteady popularity within his own party in an election in which he never quite explained how he would deliver on his unmet promises.

Now Mr. Obama, a specialist in long shots, faces what may be the climactic challenge of his political career: a second chance to deliver the renewal he still promises, but without a clear mandate, a healthy economy or willing Republican partners.

“He has only one thing to run for: a place in history,” Robert Caro, another guest, said in an interview.

In their dinners together, which form a mini-history of the Obama presidency, the scholars could see the urgency and seriousness that he brought to his role, as well as his frustration that others did not see him and his priorities as he did. He seemed like a leader whose internal clock never quite matched that of the political system, who preferred to think in terms of the sweep of years rather than of the tick of hours or days.

Mr. Obama expressed impatience with his “inability to get people to think long term,” said H. W. Brands of the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s hard to make a case for solutions to problems where you’re not going to feel either the problem or the solution,” he recalled Mr. Obama saying.

That was why the president seemed to relish those dinners, the historians surmised: they were an antidote to the cable television news shows and moment to moment political wrangling he disparaged. Each time, he would go around the table, asking the largely left-tilting group how he was doing and what he could learn from the men they had studied, according to interviews with eight biographers who attended.

Not all of Mr. Obama’s political advisers saw the point: William M. Daley, the former White House chief of staff, spent one session looking impatient. But the conversations seemed to be an escape for Mr. Obama, “a way of yanking him back to the point of view he prefers,” said Michael Beschloss, another historian who attended.

At the first dinner, in 2009, he exuded optimism, repeating his desire for a presidency that would transform the nation, and asked for a tutorial on timing a first-year agenda — almost, some of the historians thought, as if learning more about the past could compensate for his Washington inexperience. Robert Dallek, one of the guests, asked for Mr. Obama’s signature for his grandchildren, and Mr. Obama complied, adding a hopeful flourish: “Dream big dreams!” he instructed.

But as early as that first summer, Mr. Obama admitted he was having trouble communicating his vision to the country — a problem that would become a running theme of the meetings. As they discussed how previous presidents had rallied public support, Mr. Obama would sometimes nod to the White House speechwriters he had invited as if to reinforce the points. Adam Frankel, a former speechwriter for Mr. Obama, recalled that sometimes when planning an address, he would tell them to just give Doris Kearns Goodwin, the historian personally closest to Mr. Obama, a call for help.

A year later, when Mr. Obama invited the scholars back to the White House, his mood had darkened. He was struggling to understand the Tea Party and a level of opposition he said was “not normal” by historical standards. Several of the scholars told him that the Tea Party members were like the 19th century Populists, less motivated by economic self-interest than by nativism and a fear of modernity. “It’s the politics of resentment,” Mr. Dallek said. The president seemed to agree, Mr. Dallek recalled later, replying, “There’s something subterranean about what these folks are saying.”

As Mr. Obama’s popularity fell, the dinners took on a mutually beneficial undertone: the president, who has told others that history would vindicate him, was trying to mold what biographies would eventually say, and the historians who aspired to chronicle his story were getting rare firsthand access.

But they had become counselors as well as observers. By the July 2011 dinner, as he was grappling with negotiations over the debt ceiling crisis and privately planning to attack Republicans as soon as it was over, the historians were suggesting a new role model. “We pushed Teddy Roosevelt like crazy on him,” said Douglas Brinkley of Rice University.

Ms. Goodwin was working on a new book about Roosevelt, and she beguiled the president with anecdotes and present-day analogies. Like Mr. Obama, Roosevelt was a Nobel Prize winner who often expressed disdain for legislators, praised universal health care and rammed a progressive agenda past a hostile Congress. Within a few months, Ms. Goodwin was helping the president’s speechwriters draft an address, delivered last December and billed as the intellectual foundation for his second term, that was also a start-to-finish tribute to Roosevelt.

The historians have not seen Mr. Obama as a group since that final dinner; they figured he was too busy with his re-election campaign. When they discuss his presidency now, they credit him with winding down two wars and passing health care legislation, among other measures. Still, most of their reviews say that he did not come close to fulfilling his original aspirations: “nothing to be ashamed of,” “couldn’t put principles into practice,” “not transformative with a capital T.”

Even Ms. Goodwin, openly allied with Mr. Obama, worried that he had been so eager for lasting accomplishments that he had not forged a strong enough day-to-day connection with the nation. “Public opinion is shaped by those cycles, and if you let it go, you may lose the shaping of the opinion,” she said.

If the historians dine with the president again, several said, the topic will be obvious: how Mr. Obama could narrow the gap between his ambitions and his record, especially given the routinely cursed nature of second terms. “Everyone wants to get re-elected, but almost no second term turns out well,” Mr. Brands said.

If the president ever asked that question, it would be hard to know how to answer him, the historians said. There are no obvious lessons on how Mr. Obama can rally public or Congressional support. The Theodore Roosevelt analogy doesn’t go very far, Edmund Morris said, because unlike Mr. Obama, Roosevelt won a massive popular victory that gave him a clear mandate.

If Mr. Caro could offer the president one piece of advice now, he said, he would tell him to stop looking backward and find his own road. What worked in a different time is unlikely to aid Mr. Obama now, he said, but “there’s always a way to fight for something.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 7, 2012, on page P1 of the New York edition with the headline: Now, a Chance to Catch Up to His Epochal Vision.